currently, the Impudite is reading The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, which made me remember that, when i was working in a bookstore a couple of years ago, i found the individual books. being the anal-retentive bastard that i am, i place them all in what i thought was the correct order, the order that in which i'd read them in elementary school, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and ending with The Last Battle.

as i completed my project, i was feeling smug, until i noticed the little single digit numbers at the top of each books spine. the books were supposed to be in a different order than i remembered. gasp! then i realized that the sequence given by the little numbers was chronological for the store, i.e., the book set earliest in the history of Narnia (The Magician's Nephew) was first, followed by The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and so on to The Last Battle.

did i, as a child, just read them in the wrong order without realizing it? i don't think so (though, if i did, please let me know). one of the things i enjoyed about the books was their quirky chronology. in The Lion..., one thing is mentioned that seems to make absolutely no sense: the lamp-post. there's no reason to have it in the book really. it's just there. no explanation for it given. you just take it be one of those nutty things about Narnia. until The Magician's Nephew. now we know that it's as old as anything in Narnia, that it's an organic (so to speak) part of Narnia, and that it's something that came from our world. it's part of the connection between Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy and Digory and Polly.

reading them in the currently established sequence takes away from that. in the first book, you read about the lamp-post growing in Narnia. in the second, it's still there. "wow," you think to yourself. "it's old." and that's all you think to yourself. by the time you read Lion..., the lamp-post has lost the mystery it would have should have had, and, i think also, the book loses some of it's magick.

but that's just me.